Karl remained in front of the mirror for a few more minutes, just staring at the face that no longer belonged to him and yet somehow fit him more naturally than his old one ever had.
He took a deep breath and dragged both hands down his face.
“Right,” he muttered under his breath. “I need a nice shower first, existential apocalypse can wait. I still can't believe it. Damn!”
The voice still sounded exactly like Lucifer’s, smooth and British and annoyingly confident even while Karl felt as if his soul had been shoved into an industrial-grade blender. Somehow, that made the entire situation worse because a panicked voice shouldn't sound charming.
He turned away from the mirror and walked toward the bathroom, trying very hard not to focus on the effortless grace in every movement his body made. Each step felt smooth and natural, carrying a confidence Karl had never possessed in his previous life. Back then, mornings usually involved sore feet, aching shoulders, and the emotional enthusiasm of a sleep-deprived raccoon digging through expired trash. Now he moved like the marble floor existed purely for his benefit.
The bathroom looked just as absurd as the rest of the penthouse.
White marble covered the walls and floor, veined with soft streaks of gold shimmering beneath recessed lighting. The shower alone looked large enough to qualify as a studio apartment back in Karl’s old neighborhood. Glass walls, black fixtures, heated flooring, and expensive towels folded with military precision filled the room with a kind of wealth that stopped feeling tasteful and started becoming mildly disrespectful toward poor people.
Karl stared at it for a second before letting out a weak laugh.
“Of course, the Devil has a bathroom nicer than my entire apartment.”
Karl stepped into the shower and turned on the water. Warm water came down in a steady stream, flowing over his hair and shoulders while steam filled the air around him. He looked up with his eyes open and flinched, expecting the water to sting his eyes or get into his nose, but it didn’t. The water felt good as it flowed over him, and his body welcomed it easily.
His eyes remained open beneath the falling water.
“Well,” he murmured quietly, “that’s new.”
His body no longer felt fragile in any normal human sense. It felt different, alien in subtle and terrifying ways that kept sneaking up on him when he least expected it. Twenty-seven years of exhaustion and minimum-wage survival instincts had not prepared him for casually ignoring waterboarding by showerhead.
That thought should have amused him more than it did.
Instead, tension settled heavily in his chest.
Karl leaned one hand against the marble wall while hot water beat steadily across his shoulders. Steam softened the edges of the room into a hazy blur, but his thoughts refused to quiet down long enough for him to enjoy even a few seconds of peace.
'God knows everything.'
The realization surfaced with such certainty that Karl did not even question it. Lucifer’s memories understood that truth on a level deeper than belief or faith. Father knew creation from beginning to end, every choice, rebellion, grief, and every pathetic little human complaint muttered beneath flickering streetlights after miserable late-night shifts.
Which meant God knew about Karl too.
He knew about the crowded buses and cheap meals, the unpaid bills stacked beside a dying laptop, and the cream soda Karl stopped buying because even tiny comforts eventually became luxuries, along with the exploding manhole cover. And not to mention the fact that Karl had finished rewatching Lucifer yesterday before dying the very next day and waking up inside the exact same universe wearing the Devil’s face.
"A coincidence?"
Karl thought for a moment.
“Nope, I don't think so,” he whispered.
The words vanished beneath the sound of the shower, though they still felt strangely heavy in the air around him.
He had seen the whole show. He knew the people involved, the mistakes they would make, and the emotional issues hidden in every relationship. Uriel, Remiel, Father Frank, Charlotte, Dan, the celestial wars, the manipulations, and the ongoing family drama, all pretending to be character development, waited somewhere in the future.
His fingers curled slowly against the marble wall.
Maybe that was the point.
Maybe God had not dragged him into this world as some cosmic joke. Maybe Karl Jenson, painfully average and aggressively mortal, had been chosen precisely because he knew the story from the outside looking in. Lucifer had lived through everything blindly, stumbling from anger to love to heartbreak without ever understanding where the road eventually led. Karl already knew where some of those roads ended.
Uriel surfaced first in his mind.
The memory of that episode returned with uncomfortable clarity. Uriel had manipulated events through patterns and pressure, Lucifer had panicked, the blade had come out, and the guilt afterward had never truly faded, no matter how much he pretended otherwise. He didn't even realize that his mother had manipulated him using that guilt to increase his anger against God.
Karl swallowed hard while water rolled down across his lips.
“Maybe I can stop that.”
Remiel followed soon after, thanks to Michael. Her death settled heavily in his chest as another sibling lost to a cycle of celestial stupidity and escalating conflict. Angels spent eternity pretending they were immortal right up until the moment existence reminded them otherwise.
Beyond those personal tragedies, larger shadows waited with even sharper teeth. Future wars, rising demons, divided angels, Michael’s manipulations, Rory’s timeline, Heaven, Hell, Earth, and all of creation had been dragged again and again into one enormous divine family argument with catastrophic consequences for everybody involved.
Somewhere beyond even that, Ragnarok lingered at the edge of Karl’s thoughts.
'Fucking Ragnarok.'
The word did not fit neatly into Lucifer’s world, yet something deep inside him whispered that creation was larger than television mythology had ever shown. Maybe the real universe stretched far beyond one storyline or one pantheon. Maybe the show had only revealed a tiny piece of something vastly bigger, darker, and more complicated than humanity understood. And if this timeline turned out to be one of the DC canon, then it'll be a mess.
His human instincts wanted to reject that possibility entirely, while his celestial ones quietly knew better.
“What do you want from me?” He asked God.
No one answered. The shower continued running over him while steam curled against the marble walls, leaving Karl alone with the heavy silence that followed his question.
He waited several more seconds anyway before finally letting out a tired breath.
“Figures,” he muttered quietly. “Big Guy brings me back as the Devil, dumps several million years of trauma into my skull, then leaves me on read.”
Still, nothing answered him.
Karl lowered his head while water streamed down the back of his neck. Somewhere beneath the surface, Lucifer’s old anger toward God remained alive, vast and ancient and dangerous enough to burn through entire civilizations if fully unleashed. Karl could feel it resting there like scar tissue woven directly into his soul.
Yet the anger never fully surfaced.
Something quieter settled into place instead.
Maybe God wanted him to decide things for himself.
Maybe instructions would defeat the entire purpose. If Heaven handed him a neat little checklist explaining every correct decision beforehand, then none of those choices would actually belong to him. Lucifer had spent eternity fighting against control, manipulation, destiny, and all the invisible strings attached to his existence. Karl understood that fear now with deeply uncomfortable clarity.
Perhaps silence was the only answer God could give him.
There would be no command, prophecy, or divine roadmap waiting to make the future simple. There was only another chance and the terrifying freedom to decide what kind of Devil he wanted to become.
Karl closed his eyes briefly before exhaling.
“All right,” he said softly. “I’ll do what I think is right.”
The words sounded small beneath the rushing water, though something inside him steadied slightly after speaking them aloud. He could not fix everything overnight. Hell, he still barely understood what he even was anymore. Still, one thing remained painfully clear in his mind.
He was not going to let the story bleed the same way twice.
Uriel did not have to die, and neither did Remiel. Maybe Charlotte could survive, and Dan could avoid the nightmare waiting for him. Maybe Chloe would never have to carry half the suffering originally waiting somewhere in her future.
Or maybe Karl would accidentally ruin everything beyond repair.
That possibility lingered in his thoughts like a particularly smug demon wearing a party hat and holding a bottle of gasoline.
He sighed slowly before reaching over and turning the shower handle off.
The water stopped immediately, leaving faint steam curling through the bathroom while droplets slid from the walls and tapped softly against the marble floor. Karl glanced downward at his soaked body before frowning slightly as instinct stirred somewhere deep inside him. The sensation did not feel exactly like memory. It resembled muscle reflex more than conscious thought, as if he had suddenly discovered how to move a limb he had never possessed before.
Power shifted beneath his skin.
A soft golden glow spread slowly across his body, warm and controlled. Water clinging to his skin hissed faintly before evaporating into vapor, delicate streams of steam rising from his hair and shoulders until he stood completely dry within seconds.
Karl blinked once.
Then he looked down at his hands, turned them over thoughtfully, and let out a short laugh.
“...Now that’s handy.”
The glow faded as quickly as it had appeared.
For the first time since waking up inside this nightmare wrapped in luxury packaging, a genuine smile tugged lightly at the corner of his mouth. Out of all the supernatural abilities the Devil apparently possessed, self-drying might genuinely rank among the most practical.
Then his eyes went toward his dick. "Huh?! Okay. Now I get it... Haha. It's kinda weird to look at a new dick but... Oh, well..."
He stepped out of the shower and opened the nearby cupboard beside the sink. Several robes hung neatly inside, each one softer and more expensive than anything Karl had ever touched during his previous life. He grabbed a dark robe almost automatically before slipping it on and loosely tying it around his waist.
The mirror caught his reflection again.
Lucifer Morningstar stared back at him, looking elegant, dangerous, and annoyingly perfect. Even his hair remained flawlessly styled despite spending the last several minutes directly beneath running water, because apparently, physics itself had decided attractive people deserved special treatment.
"Save people and family, stop the bad guys, drink as much as I want without killing my liver and kidneys, get laid... There's the doc, Eve, Maze and countless girls, celebs... What about pornstars?! Maybe I'll save some before they enter the industry and have them all for myself. Wait! I can create a freakin' harem! Hehehe," He said to himself as his devil face flashed for a moment, giving him a jumpscare. "Fuck!" He jumped up. "Phew! Okay. Almost forgot about that."
When Lucifer walked out of the shower, those two girls were awake and waiting for him, topless on the bed.
He watched them for a moment. 'Holy crap!'
"Sorry, ladies, as much as I'd love to keep you two in bed, I have some important work to do. So, get going now, chop-chop," He said with a little clap.
"Alright," The blond picked up her bra and shoes and walked toward the elevator.
The brunette followed her.
She turned back and winked at him. Then she waved a little before walking into the elevator. "Later, Lucifer."
Lucifer waved back with his signature smile.
As the elevator door closed, he walked to the balcony and looked outside. "Okay, I need to figure out the timeline. I haven't met Chloe yet, so this might be season 1, episode 1, or it could be before that. But I can't ignore the chance that this is episode 1. That means Delilah... She seemed sweet but hurt. She’s kind of nice too. If she comes to see me tonight, then it’s definitely episode 1. I’m going to save her."